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ABOUT  AN  OLD 
NEW  ENGLAND  CHURCH 

An  Address  on  "  The  Good  Old  Days" 

PUBLISHED  AS  A  SOUVENIR  OF    THE  ONE  HUNDRED  AND 

FIFTIETH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  CONGREGATIONAL 

CHURCH    OF    SHARON,    CONNECTICUT 


BY 

REV.  GERALD   STANLEY   LEE 


SHARON,  CONN. 

W.  W.  KNIGHT   &   CO. 
1891 


COPYRIGHT,  1890,  BY 
GERALD  STANLEY  LEE 


Press  of  J.  J.  Little  &  Co. 
Astor  Place,  New  York 


AS   TO  YE  EVENT 

It  was  on  this  wise. 

In  ye  year  of  our  Lord,  ye  eighteen  hundred  and 
ninetieth,  and  of  Sharon  and  ye  Sharon  Church,  ye  hun- 
dred and  fiftieth,  on  ye  thirty  first  day  of  December  at 
half  after  ten  by  ye  clock  ye  members  of  ye  old  Church  and 
all  ye  Sharonites,  and  ye  Canaanites  and  ye  Ameniaites, 
and  ye  Nor-folks  and  ye  Lake-villians,  and  many  more 
people  from  these  parts,  did  gather  in  ye  Congregational 
Meetinghouse  to  celebrate  a  century  and  a  half  and  to 
bless  their  forefathers  and  to  wonder  at  them. 

Ye  First  Part  was  a  devotional  exercise,  and  then  after 
a  short  waiting  time  did  begin  ye  Second  Part,  ye  men 
and  women  sitting  as  ye  saints  have  been  wont  to  sit  in 
this  church,  on  separate  sides  of  ye  meetinghouse ;  ye 
singers  clad  in  ye  gown-and-bonnet  orthodoxy  of  ye  olden 
time  did  sing  old  Sherburne  with  mouths  wide  open  and 
shrill  and  did  make  ye  "glory  to  shine  all  around"  until 
they  did  have  no  more  breath  for  to  make  it  shine  with, 
and  ye  beadle  did  move  to  and  fro  to  watch  ye  young  men 
and  maidens  and  ye  sprightly  lads,  and  ye  Parson  did 
begin  to  speak  of  ye  good  old  days — and  ye  Parson  did  keep 
speaking  for  a  good  while,  ye  singers  interrupting  him 
once  and  again  with  Judgment  Anthems  and  such  like, 
while  ye  tables  of  grandmotherly  thrift  did  show  white 
through  ye  doors  beyond,  and  ye  odor  of  coming  events  did 


2012458 


AS    TO    YE    EVENT. 


steal  over  ye  pews  ;  — and  then  ye  events  did  come,  and  ye 
events  -went — vety  many  plates  full ;  and  ye  people  did  meet 
again  to  hear  much  speaking,  and  Dr.  Hiram  Eddy  did 
tell  who  should  speak  and  what  they  should  speak,  and 
they  did  speak  wisely  and  wittily  and  well,  so  that  all  did 
enjoy  it,  and  Dr  Eddy  did  speak  all  ye  time  and  in  be- 
tween and  ye  people  did  enjoy  that  too,  and  then  ye  people 
did  all  rise  and  ye  Parson  did  line  out  ' '  Bkst  be  ye  tie 
that  binds  our  hearts  in  Christian  love  "  and  ye  hearts  did 
all  go  home  with  ye  benediction  of  one  hundred  and  fifty 
years,  and  all  was  over,  except  ye  next  hundred  and  fifty 
years, — and  may  God  bless  them — and  bless  us  that  they 
may  take  after  ye  hundred  and  fifty  years  that  are  gone. 


AS   TO    YE   CONSEQUENCES 

u  Gentle  Reader"  be  gentle.  Here  it  is.  I  can't  kelp 
it.  I  have  done  it.  I  -won't  do  it  again.  This  little  book 
is  a  grave  undertaking,  especially  in  its  pleasantry,  and  it 
fills  me  with  gravity  to  think  of  it ;  a  gravity  that  both 
you  and  I  -would  fain  haz-e  in  the  book. 

I  have  but  one  favor  to  ask — else  we  are  strangers  from 
the  first  page  :  Enter  this  little  volume  through  the  church 
door,  and  read  it  surrounding  yourself  -with  the  occasion. 

I  -would  that  I  might  lend  you  the  original  pitch-pipe, 
•we  used,  to  set  the  tunes  with,  that  Anniversary  morning, 
that  you  and  I  might  start  together  on  exactly  the  same 
key,  for  unless  -we  do  I  fear  that  one  of  us  will  Jlat  all 
the  way  through — and  you  will  accuse  me.  Readers  always 
do. 

On  the  following  pages  are  the  fatal  footprints  of  a 
random  talk  that  would  not  have  been  so  random,  if  it 
had  known  that  it  was  to  be  tracked  with  printer  s  ink. 
But  what  is,  is,  and  sadder  still,  what  was,  was,  and 
herein  is  the  end  of  it — except  for  you — "gentle  reader"; 
and  will  you  please  remember  in  my  behalf  the  ijtk  of 
Corinthians  as  you  read,  and  kindly  think  of  the  excellent 
paper  on  some  of  these  pages  when  you  can  find  nothing 
else  to  think  of.  You  see — /  have  been  seized  with  this 
disease  of  "Published  by  request,"  and  I  have  found  that, 
in  trying  to  trim  the  -wild  woods  you  are  about  to  enter, 


AS    TO    YE    CONSEQUENCES. 


into  some  sort  of  literary  civilization,  I  could  only  do  it  by 
actually  cutting  them  down  and  planting  all  over  again,  so 
I  have  given  up,  and  here  they  are :  a  great  deal  of 
brush,  and  thick  undergrowths  of  informality,  sprouting  all 
over -with  "  didn'ts"  and  "  don'ts."  Some  of  you,  I  fear, 
will  be  caught  in  little  brambles  of  expression,  and  there 
are  a  great  many  tough  little  roots  of  phrases  that  ought  to 
have  been  covered  up,  and  ambuscades  of  meaning  that 
ought  to  have  been  uncovered — mere  Sharonisms,  known 
only  to  the  local  mind,  and  other  isms  known  only,  I  fear, 
to  my  own  ; — and  the  paths,  with  their  zigzag  logic,  yoti  will 
strangely  wonder  at,  but  as  you  wander  through  this 
thicket  of  nothings,  if  perchance  you  find  a  flower,  pluck 
it,  I  beg  you,  while  the  bloom  lasts,  and  keep  it  to  re- 
member me  by  and  to  forgive  me  with. 

Only  a  little  historical  effervescence  is  this :  a  dash,  a 
sketch,  dealing,  as  sketches  do,  in  the  distinctive  rather 
than  the  true,  perhaps. 

I  have  already  asked  my  own  forgiveness.  I  know  as 
the  years  go  on  I  shall  ask  it  again,  and  now  I  ask  yours. 

GERALD  STANLEY  LEE 
THE  PARSONAGE,  SHARON 

yanuary  20,  1891 


FROM  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  DAY 

It  was  a  skilful  turning  of  the  microscope  on  to  a  germ, 
causing  us  to  see  its  unfolding  and  expansion,  its  growth, 
bloom,  and  fruit ;  climbing  the  trellis,  overspreading  the  vale, 
fitting  the  land,  bathing  its  branches  in  the  two  oceans,  shak- 
ing its  golden  clusters  in  the  face  of  all  nations  :  PURITAN- 
ISM, THE  GERM,  ONE  HUNDRED  AND  FIFTY  YEARS  AGO. 

It  was  an  occasion  of  singular  interest.  There  were  some 
relics  of  the  olden  times — old  dresses,  old  bonnets,  old  music, 
with  the  old  "pitch-pipe"  and  the  grand  old  bass-viol ;  the 
sombre  old  pulpit,  from  whence  the  lightnings  had  flashed 
with  no  uncertain  sound. 

This  solemn  old  pulpit,  with  the  bright  young  pastor 
in  it,  with  his  scintillations  of  wit  and  his  flexible  style,  re- 
vealed the  striking  contrast  between  the  Then  and  the  Now 
— the  Then,  with  its  stern  casque  and  chain  armor  ;  the 
Now,  with  its  armor  of  light  and  beauty. 

We  laughed,  yet  not  in  ridicule  of  something  grotesque, 
but  at  beauty  in  its  tamest  dress,  expanding  more  and  more 
into  symmetry  by  the  working  out  of  the  true  inwardness 
of  the  Christian  life. 

We  saw  the  beauty,  and  we  discovered  nothing  musty 
as  we  inhaled  the  odor  of  the  Rose  of  Sharon  and  the  Lily 
of  the  Valley.  It  was  a  rose  one  hundred  and  fifty  years 
old,  and  still  all  abloom  in  its  modern  Sharon. 

But  Puritanism  was  more   than  a  rose.      It  was  a  tree 


8        FROM   THE   PRESIDENT   OF    THE   DAY. 


of  sturdy  and  magnificent  growth,  blooming  midst  the  pri- 
meval forests.  It  bloomed  there  because  it  had  the  true  life 
in  it;  and  we,  the  descendants,  were  shaking  the  fruit  from 
the  boughs  of  the  old  tree — fruit  intellectual,  fruit  tzsthet- 
ical,  fruit  social,  Matrons  there  were  more  than  Roman ; 
maidens  many  and  fair,  fifty  Priscilla  Mutters,  who 
seemed  to  say,  but  did  not,  "  Why  don't  you  speak  for  your- 
self, John  ? " ;  tables  blooming  with  fioral  beauty,  loaded 
•with  fruits  of  earth,  air,  and  sea. 

All  this  was  enjoyed  in  the  glow  of  fraternal  feeling, 
rendered  sublime  by  the  grandest  memories.  We  felt,  with 
filial  devotion,  the  breath  of  the  fathers  and  mothers  in  our 
festivities  and  saw  the  connection  of  the  Past  with  the  Pres- 
ent: 

"  That  human  things,  retreating  on  themselves, 
Move  forward,  leading  up  the  golden  year." 

HIRAM  EDDY 


ABOUT  AN  OLD  NEW  ENGLAND 
CHURCH:  ONE  HUNDRED 
AND  FIFTY  YEARS 

LET  us  understand  one  another  to  begin 
with.  This  is  not  a  history.  It  is  not  a 
study  of  the  principles  and  trends  of  thought 
of  the  last  one  hundred  and  fifty  years.  It 
is  not  an  oration.  It  is  not  a  sermon.  It 
isn't  anything,  in  fact,  except  just  what  it 
happens  to  be  as  it  meanders  along ;  a  kind 
of  semi-historical  hap-hazardness ;  a  series  of 
touches  and  sketches,  glimpses,  guesses  and 
gases,  while  an  idle  fancy  wanders  wilfully 
about  in  the  vast  roominess  of  one  hundred 


10  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

and  fifty  years,  tripping  along  over  facts, 
and,  in  a  wofully  reckless  and  illogical  way,  not 
stopping  to  look  just  long  enough  at  the  great 
things,  but  dallying  whimsically,  I  fear,  to 
look  just  a  little  too  long  at  the  small  ones. 
If  I  were  to  give  you  an  historical 
address  this  morning,  covering  the  last  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years,  I  wouldn't  get 
through  in  time  for  our  two  hundredth  cel- 
ebration ;  and  the  dishes  have  to  be  cleared 
away — you  know — and  all  sorts  of  other 
practical  things  that  ministers  are  apt  to 
forget,  so  I  will  not  detain  you  with  an 
historical  address.  Indeed,  if  I  were  only  to 
give  one  minute — one  of  these  light-headed, 
nineteenth  century  minutes  of  ours — to  each 
of  these  one  hundred  and  fifty  years,  it 
would  take  two  hours  and  a  half  to  deliver  it 
— from  which  you  would  wish  to  be  delivered 


NEW    ENGLAND     CHURCH.  II 

— and  that  would  be  at  least  two  hours  too 
old-fashioned  ;  and  though  some  of  you 
might  wish  a  little  more  old-fashioned  min- 
ister, you  had  rather  have  him  old-fashioned 
in  some  other  way,  and  I  am  sure  that  if  the 
good  Lord  has  taken  one  hundred  and  fifty 
years  to  go  over  all  these  things,  it  would 
be  a  mistake  for  me  to  attempt  to  go  over 
them  in  three-quarters  of  an  hour.  I  have 
said  this  so  that  you  may  expect  nothing, 
and  then  you  will  get  just  what  you  ex- 
pect and  go  home  gratified. 

This  town  and  church  commenced  to- 
gether. One  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago 
this  town  was  the  church,  this  church  was 
the  town  ;  and  they  were  so  identified  that, 
practically,  the  church  had  selectmen  and  the 
town  had  deacons.  There  is  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years,  difference — illustrated — here 


12  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

in  the  way  of  doing  things.  Nowadays  a 
town  is  born,  and  it  is  some  time  before 
the  church  comes,  and  the  town  is  born 
again.  Sharon  was  born  and  born  again  at 
the  same  time  ;  almost  born  again  before  it 
was  born  at  all.  Leadville,  we  are  told,  with 
a  population  of  125,000,  finally  secured  one 
minister,  and  he  had  five  hundred  weddings 
and  three  hundred  funerals  in  his  first  year. 
Towns  nowadays  start  with  a  depot ;  then 
they  started  with  a  church.  I  find  the  fol- 
lowing votes  upon  the  record  of  the  first 
town  meeting  of  Sharon  : 

VOTED,  "  That  Nathaniel  'Skinner,  Jonathan  Dun- 
ham and  John  Sprague  was  chosen  a  Comm'tt  to  go 
after  a  minister." 

Further  voted : 

"  That  Swin  haven  a  Ring  in  Their  Noses  Shall  be 
accounted  an  orderly  Greater"  [C-r-e-a-t-^-r.] 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  13 

This  is  certainly  the  union  of  Church  and 
State. 

As  regards  the  beginning — it  is  interest- 
ing to  note  that  Captain  Dunham  and  Mr. 
Pardee  did  not  have  to  go  to  church.  The 
church  came  to  them,  worshipping  alternately 
in  their  houses,  during  the  winter  season ; 
and  in  the  summer,  the  First  Congregational 
Church  of  Sharon  was  a  barn.  We  can  im- 
agine our  forefathers  worshipping  there,  with 
the  great  brown  hay-mows  reaching  away  for 
galleries,  the  more  terrible  passages  of  the 
sermon  likely  to  be  disturbed  by  the  startled 
screech-scrawch  flying  of  a  hen,  over  the 
heads  of  the  audience,  scared  out  of  her 
guilty,  stolen  nest  in  the  hay-loft  by  the 
awful  denunciations  of  sinners ;  while  the 
long  seventeenthlies,  and  deserts  of  doc- 
trine, in  the  discourse  were  interlarded  with 


14  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

vague,  musical,  mystic  cadences  from  the 
comfortable-looking  choir  of  worthies,  too 
fond  of  the  good  things  of  this  world, 
around  the  end  of  the  building — squeal- 
ing in  high,  spare-rib  soprano  and  grunt- 
ing in  deep,  contented  bass ;  and  the  voice 
of  the  rooster  rose  high  in  the  singing  of 
the  psalms. 

This  was  in  1740.  In  the  spring  of  1741 
a  new  meeting-house,  built  of  poles,  and 
measuring  thirty-six  by  twenty,  was  erected ; 
and  the  next  one,  which  was  four  or  five 
years  in  being  completed,  was  forty-five  by 
thirty-five  feet,  and  was  located  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  street,  opposite  the  tavern.  Sev- 
eral of  our  churches  have  been  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  street,  typical  of  the  old  life,  in 
which  a  man  either  had  to  go  to  church  or 
go  decidedly  out  of  his  way  not  to.  A  bell 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  15 

was  offered  by  Hon.  Philip  Livingstone  for 
this  church,  if  the  town  would  build  a 
steeple.  This  called  out  a  vote  of  thanks, 
but  the  vote  failed  to  materialize  into  tim- 
ber enough  for  the  steeple,  and  Mr.  Living- 
stone's bell  has  not  come  yet.  Possibly 
they  put  on  an  injunction  instead  of  a 
steeple.  This  was  our  first  bell  difficulty. 
Perhaps,  because  at  this  time  the  town 
wanted  a  bell  and  couldn't  get  it,  some  of 
our  city  friends,  with  a  keen  sense  of  provi- 
dence, are  laboring  under  the  impression  that 
now  the  town  has  a  bell  and  doesn't  want  it. 
The  first  pastor  was  Rev.  Peter  Pratt. 
History  records  that  he  was  treated  very 
handsomely  by  the  church,  the  special 
points  emphasized  being  that  he  was  sup- 
plied with  firewood,  and  that  when  he  went 
to  Lebanon  to  marry  his  wife  they  paid  the 


l6  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

expense  of  hiring  a  horse   and   wagon,  that 
he  might  becomingly  bring  her  to  Sharon. 

(I  wonder  if  you   would   do  as  much  for 
me?) 

Mr.  Pratt  was  an  active  and  able  man, 
interesting  himself  in  affairs,  upholding  the 
rights  of  the  Indians,  and  starting  mission- 
work  among  them,  and  saving  the  financial 
life  of  the  colony  by  a  petition  to  the  As- 
sembly. But  Providence  seems  to  have  se- 
lected him  as  a  temperance  lesson  to  the  com- 
munity, for  he  was  so  handsomely  treated 
in  making  his  pastoral  calls  that  it  began 
to  be  noticed  that  he  was  nearly  as  bibulous 
as  he  was  biblical ;  and  the  parish  found 
itself  forced  to  the  painful  conclusion  that 
he  was  not  dry  enough  even  for  a  minister, 
and,  after  much  gathering  of  indignation,  on 
the  ninth  day  of  January,  1746,  the  town 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  17 

solemnly  voted,  as  a  terrible  blow,  that  they 
would  no  longer  supply  him  with  firewood. 
But  this  had  only  a  temporary  effect,  and 
he  was  dismissed  by  council  from  the 
church  in  1747. 

Mr.  John  Searl  was  the  next  pastor, 
after  being  employed  three  months  as  a 
candidate,  which,  by  the  way,  is  the  habit- 
ual custom  of  this  church,  a  precaution 
probably  originating  in  their  sad  experience 
with  Mr.  Pratt.  He  has  cast  a  suspicion 
over  all  the  rest  of  us ! 

Mr.  Searl  was  loved  and  respected  by 
his  people,  but  his  failing  health  required 
him  to  resign  after  five  years. 

It  would  seem  as  if  history  loved  to  in- 
dulge in  a  little  flourish  of  epigram — that 
of  two  pastors,  at  this  time,  the  one  should 
have  had  to  leave  for  his  health,  and  the 


18  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

other  for  the  health  of  the  church.  But, 
to  atone  for  all  these  things,  God  had  in 
store  for  us  a  half-century  blessing  in  the 
consecrated  pastorate  of  the  Rev.  Cotton 
Mather  Smith,  whose  influence  is  so  woven 
into  Sharon  that  the  history  of  the  town 
could  almost  be  said  for  this  time  to  be 
his  biography,  with  a  few  foot-notes  of 
other  things. 

He  was  pastor  for  fifty-two  years,  and 
every  death  and  birth  and  wedding  linked 
him  to  the  love  of  Sharon.  That  was  a 
pastorate !  And  how  the  nobility  and  possi- 
bility of  it  contrast  with  the  ecclesiastical 
fussiness  and  religious  squeamishness  of  our 
modern  ways — employing  ministers  as  spirit- 
ual hired  men  for  a  season,  and  then  walk- 
ing out  some  fine  morning  and  telling  them 
they  may  go;  or  having  them  walk  into  the 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  19 

house  at  any  time  to  inform  us  that  they 
have  something  else  in  view  and  want  to 
leave  day  after  to-morrow.  Parson  Smith 
was  not  a  preacher  who  stopped  to  speak 
to  Sharon  a  few  minutes  on  the  way  to 
preaching  somewhere  else — like  unto  some 
men  ;  but  he  was  an  institution  of  the  town 
— a  kind  of  college  in  himself — abiding 
always  in  the  community,  and  sending  out, 
like  class  after  class,  the  influences  and 
the  growths  and  inspirations  of  his  large 
nature — upon  the  lives  of  men  and  women 
— through  all  these  momentous  years. 

Whitfield  was  here  in  1770,  and  it  was 
the  influence  of  the  liberal  consecration  of 
Parson  Smith  that  gave  the  great  gospel 
Hercules  a  hearing  in  the  church;  for  many 
were  opposed — and  he  was  expecting  to 
speak  in  the  orchard  across  the  street.  He 


2O  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

was  entertained  by  Parson  Smith  at  his 
house  as  well  as  in  his  pulpit,  and  the  con- 
gregation to  hear  him  was  so  large  that 
scaffoldings  were  erected  all  around  the 
meeting-house — that  the  crowds  might  listen 
through  the  open  windows. 

The  Congregational  Church  of  Sharon 
fought  in  the  Revolutionary  War :  Rev. 
Cotton  M.  Smith  Commander ;  that  is,  figu- 
ratively speaking.  Mr.  Smith  was  willing  to 
put  his  religion  into  politics,  and  his  politics 
into  bayonets.  The  news  of  the  Battle  of 
Lexington  came  on  Sunday — and  the  pastor 
announced  it  from  the  pulpit,  with  a  speech 
like  a  war-bugle  ;  and,  immediately  after  the 
congregation  had  bowed  to  the  benediction, 
the  militia  and  volunteers  paraded  up  and 
down  before  the  meeting-h9use  in  a  kind  of 
praise-service  of  war,  and  prepared  imme- 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  21 

diately  to  march  to  the  field;  and  Parson 
Smith,  martial — as  a  modern  David — not  free 
by  his  calling  to  go  and  fight  against  the 
British,  went  with  the  army  to  the  North  to 
pray  against  them,  as  chaplain  to  Colonel 
Hinman's  regiment.  One  of  the  hymns  fre- 
quently sung  at  Sabbath  worship,  in  which 
our  sturdy  forefathers  were  wont  to  cannon- 
ade forth  their  pent-up  feelings,  began  with 
this  verse : 

"Let  tyrants  shake  their  iron  rod, 

And  slavery  clank  their  galling  chains, 
We  fear  them  not,  we  trust  in  God, 
New  England's  God   forever  reigns  ;" 

and  the  feeling  ran  so  high  that  undoubt- 
edly some  of  the  good  saints  would  have 
had  their  faith  wonderfully  shaken  if  they 
hadn't  thought  that  God  was  on  their 
side,  and  possessed  of  a  decided  prejudice 


22  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

against  the  British  ;  and  while  they  were 
using  the  new  church  to  store  up  indigna- 
tion against  the  enemy,  they  used  the  old 
one  as  a  storehouse  for  powder  and  arms. 

These  were  exciting  times.  Election  ser- 
mons were  common  all  over  the  land,  and 
the  ministers  not  only  preached  the  law  of 
Moses  and  the  gospel  of  Christ,  but  the 
law  of  New  England  and  the  gospel  of 
standing  stoutly  for  our  rights.  Several 
ministers  fought  and  preached  alternately. 
The  pastor  of  the  Congregational  Church  in 
Sturbridge,  Mass.,  not  being  able  to  go 
himself,  sent  a  cask  of  powder,  to  blow  his 
wrath  all  over  the  British  at  the  expense 
of  one-fifth  of  his  salary,  while  one  of  his 
deacons  furnished  bullets  to  match ;  and  the 
First  Church  in  Boston  held  a  meeting  to 
vote  that  the  lead-weights  of  the  clock  be 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  23 

melted    into   bullets,  and   other  metal  substi- 
tuted instead. 

Rev.  Cotton  Mather  Smith's  patriotism 
and  ability  made  him  widely  known,  and 
carried  the  name  of  Sharon  to  where  it 
otherwise  would  not  have  gone.  His  force 
and  courage  won  the  admiration  of  all 
who  knew  him  or  heard  of  him,  and  gave 
him  a  close  friend  in  General  Schuyler,  his 
commander.  At  the  time  of  Burgoyne's 
march  from  the  North,  news  had  come  to 
Sharon  of  two  doubtful  battles  and  a  third 
imminent,  which  brought  all  men  and 
women  to  church,  Sunday  morning,  with 
but  one  great,  eager  thought,  and  one  awful 
dread,  while  the  children  were  all  still  with 
wonder.  Parson  Smith  preached  a  never-to- 
be-forgotten  sermon  on  the  text :  "  Watch- 
man, what  of  the  night?  The  watchman 


24  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

saith,  The  morning  cometh."  He  appealed 
to  their  faith,  and  their  valor,  and  prophe- 
sied a  victory,  and — as  a  magnificent  climax 
that  God  had  been  arranging — all  the  way 
from  Saratoga,  a  messenger  arrived  at  the 
close  of  the  sermon  with  the  news  that  our 
arms  were  overwhelmingly  victorious  and 
that  Burgoyne  had  surrendered  ;  and  when 
the  pastor  read  the  letter  from  the  pulpit, 
if  the  hallelujahs  of  those  anxious,  listening 
hearts  could  have  been  put  into  music,  the 
echo  of  them  would  be  sounding  yet,  and 
they  would  not  have  waited  to  line  them 
out  either. 

The  first  Methodist  preaching  in  Sharon 
was  shortly  after  the  war ;  Parson  Smith, 
being  somewhat  opposed  on  doctrinal 
grounds,  holding  a  discussion  with  Mr.  Gar- 
rison, their  preacher.  There  was  much  op- 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  25 

position  in  the  community,  and  the  Method- 
ism of  Sharon  commenced,  paradoxically,  in 
the  ball-room  of  Callow's  Tavern ;  but,  owing 
to  the  fact  that  the  town  authorities  threat- 
ened to  take  away  the  license  of  the  tavern- 
keeper  if  he  allowed  any  more  Methodist 
gatherings  there,  the  meetings  were  moved 
to  private  houses,  and  held  every  two  weeks 
on  the  afternoon  of  a  week-day.  For  a 
saloon-keeper  to  be  expelled  from  a  church 
is  very  commonplace;  but  where  is  there 
another  church  that  has  the  unique  charm 
and  interest  of  having  been  expelled  from 
a  saloon?  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  our  Meth- 
odist brethren  will  keep  on  doing  all  that 
they  can  to  return  the  compliment,  and 
take  their  turn  in  having  the  expulsion  the 
other  way.  The  preaching  was  marked  by 
great  earnestness  and  freedom  and  with 


26  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

many  conversions.  History  records  that 
Andrew  Harpending,  a  preacher  of  some 
note,  as  a  large  crowd  was  leaving  the  Con- 
gregational Church,  made  a  pulpit  of  a  table 
and  preached  so  powerfully  to  the  assembled 
multitude  that  a  young  lady  half  a  mile 
away,  standing  in  the  open  window  of  her 
room,  distinctly  heard  all  that  was  said,  and 
under  its  influence  was  brought  into  the 
Christian  life.  This  is  the  most  striking  in- 
stance of  long-distance  conversion  I  have  ever 
heard  of,  although  I  imagine  that  our  Meth- 
odist brethren  have  lifted  up  just  as  many 
souls  by  dropping  their  voices  as  they  used 
to  in  the  good  old  days  by  raising  them. 

Let  us  now  try  to  place  before  ourselves 
a  general  idea  of  the  characteristics  and  con- 
ditions of  church  life  and  worship  in  those 
good  old  days. 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  27 

As  regards  the  position  of  the  minister  in 
the  community,  it  was  well  expressed  by  the 
word  "  parson,"  which  literally  means  "  per- 
son"— "  The  Person  "  in  the  parish.  This  is 
very  august.  He  had  a  complete  monopoly 
in  all  the  materials  of  the  intellectual  and 
spiritual  life  of  his  people.  He  had  no  com- 
petition. Nowadays  a  minister  enters  prac- 
tically into  competition  with  all  literature, 
with  the  telegraph  and  newspaper,  and  peo- 
ple cannot  keep  him  as  a  pastor  but  just 
about  so  long,  for  fear  of  finding  out  how 
little  he  knows. 

He  must  be  as  full  of  facts  as  an  en- 
cyclopaedia, as  full  of  knowledge  of  human 
nature  as  a  novel,  as  interesting  as  a  play, 
as  close  to  life  as  a  newspaper ;  he  must 
have  the  style  of  the  Ruskin  on  the  library 
tables  at  home,  the  eloquence  of  Carlyle,  the 


28  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

prophet-tone  of  Emerson,  and  the  imagina- 
tion of  Shakespeare.  He  must  be  a  whole 
library  in  himself,  both  for  ready  reference 
and  to  be  drawn  on  at  will ;  and,  to  say 
nothing  of  calling  on  every  one  before  he 
calls  on  any  one  else,  with  a  kind  of  minia- 
ture omnipresence  of  the  Being  he  stands  for, 
he  must  take  a  post-graduate  course  in  om- 
niscience and  know  as  much  about  every- 
thing as  each  specialist  of  a  man  knows 
about  anything.  One  can  hardly  wonder  if 
even  a  man  like  Parson  Smith,  had  he  come 
to  Sharon  in  1854  instead  of  1754,  would  not 
have  resigned — or  even  fallen  in  with  the 
modern  style  of  being  asked  to  resign — by 
this  time.  Isaiah  himself  wouldn't  have  re- 
mained in  a  modern  pulpit  fifty-two  years 
— and,  if  he  had,  probably  the  church  would 
have  valued  him  so  highly  as  to  feel  called 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  29 

upon  to  help  him  resign  for  some  other  church. 
It  was  because  the  271  pastors  in  Massa- 
chusetts in  1776  were  public  libraries,  lecture 
bureaus,  magazines  and  newspapers,  all  in 
themselves,  that  233  of  them  retained  their 
pastorates  until  death ;  and  the  parishioners 
of  Joseph  Adams,  who  preached  to  his  peo- 
ple for  sixty-eight  years,  did  not  read  the 
Sunday  edition  of  the  New  York  Blank, 
nor  possess  the  rival  attraction  of  a  modern 
apostle  of  Mars  Hill  gesticulating  by  tele- 
graph for  the  national  edification. 

In  the  good  old  days  people  were  taxed 
for  the  minister  just  as  they  were  taxed 
for  the  highways.  The  straight  and  narrow 
path  was  a  State  road  in  those  days,  and 
our  forefathers  evidently  intended  to  keep 
the  roads  as  well  open  to  the  next  world 
as  they  were  in  this  (although  it  is  to  be 


30  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

hoped  that  our  road  to  Sharon  Station 
will  not  be  taken  as  an  example  to  the 
churches). 

In  some  towns  the  minister  was  so  un- 
worldly that  the  town  appointed  a  steward 
to  manage  his  affairs  for  him.  In  others, 
there  was  a  small  farm  attached  to  the 
parsonage,  and  the  parson  was  often  as 
much  of  an  authority  on  onions  and  pota- 
toes as  he  was  on  the  Garden  of  Eden 
and  the  ten  commandments ;  and  there  is 
a  story  to  the  effect  that  one  good  dom- 
inie was  so  famous  for  his  onions  that 
his  sermons  were  more  flavored  with  them 
than  with  theology,  and  his  people  were 
more  proud  of  his  orchard  than  they  were 
of  his  eloquence.  One  of  his  deacons  is 
reported  as  saying :  "  Waal,  our  minister 
gives  so  much  attention  to  his  farm  and 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  31 

orchard  that  we  get  pretty  poor  sermons ; 
but  I  tell  you  one  thing,  brethren,  he  is 
mighty  movin'  in  prayer  in  caterpillar  and 
cankerworm  time." 

Every  one  was  obliged  to  go  to  church 
in  those  days,  and  inspectors  roamed  the 
fields  for  truants.  There  are  many  cases  of 
discipline  on  record  for  failure  to  be  at  ser- 
vices, and,  if  any  persons  were  caught  stand- 
ing and  talking  about  the  meeting-house 
while  a  service  was  going  on  inside,  the 
church  appointed  a  committee  to  go  and 
labor  with  them  that  they  might  reflect,  re- 
pent, and  mend  the  evil  of  their  ways.  Mem- 
bers of  the  Horseshed  Class  in  our  Sunday 
School,  please  notice.  Because  Balaam's  ass 
prophesied,  it  does  not  follow  that  all  four- 
footed  beasts  of  burden  are  capable  spiritual 
advisers. 


32  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

While  the  New  England  parson  has  been 
somewhat  misrepresented  in  literature,  there 
is  a  great  deal  to  bear  out  the  general  state- 
ment that  religion,  in  the  old  days,  was  lit  up 
with  a  decidedly  lurid  glare  and  consisted, 
with  many  saints,  largely  of  a  deep  feeling 
that  something  terrible  was  going  to  happen. 

Speaking  with  strict  qualification  of  the 
more  common  people,  and  bearing  in  mind 
how  much  ignorance  there  was,  and  how  this 
coarseness  and  ignorance  would  affect  the 
preaching  that  tried  to  reach  it,  making  it  a 
gospel  of  strong  measures  and  overdrawn 
appeals  to  the  senses,  it  was  too  true  that 
God  to  many  was  a  Brooding  .Awfulness, 
the  church  apparently  using  the  spirit  of  the 
sword  rather  than  the  Sword  of  the  Spirit. 
Religion  was  often  a  kind  of  baptized  mor- 
bidness, a  scared  righteousness ;  piety  was  a 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  33 

kind  of  tremulousness  of  the  soul  under 
Sinai,  and  the  doctrine  of  the  sovereignty  of 
God  was  so  unfortunately  exaggerated  that 
the  greatness  of  the  place  of  the  soul  in 
the  plans  of  God  was  crowded  into  a  mere 
rat-hole,  in  the  popular  conception  of  things  : 
so  that  all  the  universe,  with  the  stars  on 
the  watch,  was  on  a  mighty  still-hunt  for 
the  guilty  soul  of  man,  peering  out  of  the 
mouse-nest  of  his  sins,  watching  for  a  chance 
to  fly  from  the  general  doom  of  things  ;  and 
sainthood,  in  the  case  of  many  ignorant 
people,  was  a  kind  of  running — a  running 
not  of  the  race  that  is  set  before  us  but 
from  the  doom  that  chases  behind  us — and 
to  a  remarkable  degree  the  atmosphere  was 
so  full  of  brimstone  that  religion  sometimes 
seemed  caricatured,  in  the  popular  mind,  as 
a  kind  of  vast  theological  fire-escape,  and 


34  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

Mount  Sinai  so  loomed  up  over  Mount  Cal- 
vary that  it  is  no  wonder  we  are  carrying 
the  reaction  a  little  too  far  nowadays. 

The  choir  interrupts  to  carry  on  the 
idea  musically,  and  to  the  tune  of  "  Green- 
wich "  touchingly  renders  the  following  poem : 

"Lord,  what  a  thoughtless  wretch  was  I 
To  mourn,  and  murmur,  and  repine 
To  see  the  wicked  placed  on  high, 
In  pride  and  robes  of  honor  shine. 

"  But,  oh,  their  end  !  their  dreadful  end  ! 

Thy  sanctuary  taught  me  so  ! 
On  slippery  rocks  I  see  them  stand, 
And  fiery  billows  roll  below  !  " 

With  this  conception  more  or  less  com- 
mon among  the  mass  of  church-goers,  it  is 
very  easy  to  see  how  the  minister  might 
take  some  of  the  awfulness  brooding  about 
him  unto  himself,  and  so  far  forget  the, 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  35 

"  Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  me," 
that  the  little  children  certainly  did  suffer  if 
they  had  to  come  unto  him.  But  under- 
neath all  the  sternness  there  was  a  deal 
of  sweetness  and  a  kind  of  beautiful,  au- 
stere gentleness ;  and  it  is  one  of  the  charms 
of  the  old  New  England  character  of  the 
highest  type  that  many  and  many  men  were 
quaint  contradictions  of  their  theology,  while 
its  cold,  bold,  rocky  outlines  only  made  an 
impressive"  background  for  the  beauty  of 
the  spirit  of  their  lives.  And  please  re- 
member that  I  have  said  this — and  feel  this, 
through  all  else  that  I  say  ;  for,  indeed,  the 
beauty  of  men  is  ever  the  truest  thing 
about  them — the  part  that  God  remembers 
and  that  ever  lends  its  undying  sweet- 
ness to  the  following  lives,  whether  they 
know  it  or  not :  too  beautifully  elusive, 


36  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

too  divinely  diffused,  to  be  gathered  into 
the  clumsy  words  of  a  sketch  like  this, 
while  the  vulgar  obtrusiveness  of  theologies 
and  customs  brings  them  to  the  foreground. 
How  true  it  is  that,  while  men  have  never 
been  as  good  as  their  religion,  they  have 
always  been  a  deal  better  than  their  theol- 
ogy- 
There  is  one  rule  of  the  old  New  Eng- 
land life  that  seems  to  me  to  be  especially 
commendable.  I  am  thinking  of  proposing 
that  it  be  made  a  rule  of  this  church — at 
the  next  church-meeting:  "If  any  person  or 
persons  shall  be  guilty  of  speaking  against 
the  minister — in  any  shape,  form,  or  man- 
ner— or  of  speaking  against  his  preaching, 
said  person  or  persons  shall  be  punished 
by  fine,  whipping,  or  banishment,  or  cutting 
off  of  ears."  This  needs  no  comment.  It 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  37 

speaks  for  itself.  The  cutting  off  of  ears 
is  particularly  fitting— though  I  wonder  a 
little  that  no  provision  is  made  for  tongues 
in  the  matter.  It  seems  to  me  that  a 
little  old-fashioned  ruling  of  this  kind 
would  be  very  beneficial — and  would  sum- 
marily do  away  with  the  prevalent  idea, 
among  pew-holders  of  modern  times,  that  a 
man  pays  his  pew-rent  as  a  fee  for  the 
privilege  of  grumbling,  with  a  tacit  under- 
standing  that  he  can  grumble  to  an 
amount  twice  the  value  of  the  fee  if  he 
pays  cash  down.  Those  were  good  old 
days. 

The  first  church-edifices  were  generally 
three  stories  high,  with  heavy  beams  cross- 
ing overhead,  bare  and  unsightly,  except  as 
embroidered — as  used  to  be  the  case  occasion- 
ally in  one  old  church  in  Massachusetts — 


38  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

with  sprightly  lads  swinging  their  legs  over 
the  heads  of  the  congregation,  and  brushing 
the  dust  down  into  their  powdered  wigs. 
Kegs  of  powder,  before  stoves  were  intro- 
duced, often  lay  along  these  beams — in 
sullen  vindictiveness — as  a  kind  of  barrelled- 
up  illustration  of  what  poor  sinners  could 
expect,  who  didn't  mend  the  evil  of  their 
ways,  and  heed  the  sermon.  Square  pews 
were  not  introduced  at  first ;  but  when  they 
were,  they  had  seats  that  turned  on  hinges, 
so  that  when  the  people,  rising  according  to 
their  custom  for  the  prayers,  prepared  to  sit 
down  again,  the  slam-banging  of  the  seats 
was  like  a  volley  of  musketry,  as  if  a  salute 
had  been  fired  because  the  long  prayer  was 
finally  over. 

As    regards    attending    worship — in    those 
days,  people   came   to    it   in  their   every-day 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  39 

shoes ;  and  one  of  the  interesting  features  of 
entering  the  house  of  God  was  watching  the 
worshippers  reverently  changing  their  shoes 
at  the  door,  and  then  slyly  poking  around 
in  the  bushes  for  nice  little  nooks  to  hide 
their  old  ones  in  during  the  service. 

The  service  opened  generally  with  the 
singing  of  a  psalm,  which  was  lined  off  and 
sung  in  nasal  strains — for  the  nose  was  one 
of  the  musical  instruments  in  those  days ; 
and  though  noses  are  not  out  of  date,  by 
any  means,  we  have  lost  the  cunning  of  our 
ancestors,  and  only  a  random  genius  here 
and  there  can  strike  an  old-time  note  upon 
one  under  the  passing  inspiration  of  a  cold. 

The  prayers  were  preceded  by  requests 
for  prayer — read  from  the  pulpit.  Each  case 
was  then  taken  up.  The  prayers  were  always 
at  least  fifteen  minutes  long — very  often  twice 


40  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

or  thrice  as  long — probably  on  the  assumption 
that  it  took  the  Lord  fully  ten  minutes  to 
get  interested  in  a  prayer,  and  that  He  was 
just  about  ready  to  listen  when  the  audience 
was  through. 

Two  travellers  from  abroad  wrote  home 
as  follows — of  the  exercises  on  a  certain  day 
for  fasting  and  prayer :. 

"  We  went  into  a  church  where,  in  the  first  place, 
the  preacher  made  a  prayer  one  hour  and  fifty  min- 
utes in  length,  after  which  another  minister  delivered 
a  sermon  an  hour  long.  In  the  afternoon  three  or 
four  hours  were  consumed  with  nothing  but  prayers, 
three  ministers  relieving  each  other  alternately — when 
one  was  tired  the  other  went  up  into  the  pulpit." 

Rev.  Thomas  Clapp,  of  Taunton,  in  a 
volume  of  his  sermons,  had  a  scheme  of  one 
of  his  prayers  in  the  introduction. 

It  is  divided  into  five  general  heads,  with 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  41 

subheads,  and  makes  a  total  of  two  hundred 
and  forty  subheads  (one  for  each  head  in  the 
audience). 

It  seemed  to  be  the  feeling  that  preach- 
ers did  not  earn  their  salaries  unless  they 
talked  to  the  people  a  good  deal  longer 
than  they  did  to  the  Lord,  and  the  eloquent 
preacher  was  frequently  the  one  who  had  the 
gift  of  powerfully  not  knowing  when  to  stop. 

The  old  saying,  that  brevity  is  the  soul 
of  wit,  was  taken  by  our  Puritan  ancestors 
with  much  seriousness — and  possibly  it  is 
because  they  felt  that  wit  was  out  of  place 
in  the  pulpit  that  they  made  such  elaborate 
endeavors  to  keep  brevity  out  of  their 
sermons. 

A  certain  preacher  of  the  olden  time  had 
turned  his  hour-glass  once  in  the  sermon, 
and  was  about  to  turn  It  again,  when  he 


42  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

found  that  the  congregation,  one  by  one, 
were  slipping  out ;  and,  finally,  when  it  was 
turned  for  the  beginning  of  the  third  hour, 
the  weary  clerk  audibly  asked  his  reverend 
superior  to  lock  up  the  church  and  put  the 
key  under  the  door  when  the  sermon  was 
done,  as  he  and  a  few  remaining  auditors 
were  going  home.  The  sermon  proper  was 
generally  an  argument — and  this  was  fol- 
lowed by  what  was  called  an  "  Improve- 
ment"— which,  like  much  of  our  finite  im- 
provement, sadly  failed  to  improve. 

But  I  must  say  something  upon  the  sub- 
ject of  music,  or,  rather,  upon  the  subject 
of  discords,  for  Providence  seems  to  have 
scattered  more  evidences  of  the  exceeding 
humanness  of  human  nature  along  our  church 
history  in  connection  with  music  than  any- 
thing else.  The  first  discord  recorded  in 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  43 

our  church  is  a  musical  discord.  The  voice 
of  the  heretic  was  heard  in  the  land.  The 
younger  members  of  the  church  wanted  to 
sing  in  the  "  new  way."  I  suppose  they 
might  be  called  the  members  of  the  Chris- 
tian Endeavor  Society  of  1773.  They 
claimed  that  the  lining  out  of  hymns  was 
not  necessary,  that  it  made  the  worship 
seem  like  a  district  school,  that  the  custom 
was  originally  instituted  because  in  the 
earlier  days  few  people  knew  how  to  read, 
that  it  was  not  impressive,  that  it  was  a 
kind  of  pious  puttering.  "  It  takes  the 
edge  off  the  words  to  have  a  full  rehear- 
sal before  eve/y  line.  If  we  are  going  to 
have  singing  and  praise  the  Lord,  let's  have 
singing  and  praise  the  Lord,  and  not  this 
practising  at  praising  Him — as  if  we  didn't 
understand  it  or  He  didn't  understand  us," 


44  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

etc.,  etc.  The  older  and  wiser  heads,  how- 
ever, got  themselves  together,  and,  as  if 
they  had  a  copyright  on  all  the  wisdom  of 
eighteen  centuries  and  an  injunction  on  all 
that  was  to  come,  told  the  young  people, 
"  quietly  but  firmly,"  that  this  "  could  not 
be."  Lining  out  the  hymns  was  more  sol- 
emn, and,  besides,  it  took  longer ;  and  the 
longer  anything  took  the  more  holy  it  was, 
of  course.  But  this  did  not  satisfy,  and  the 
heretics  swelled  in  numbers — and  logic — and 
again  made  charge. 

The  town  shook. 

The  wise  heads  said :  "  Lining  out  is  sol- 
emn." Said  the  foolish  :  "  Lining  out  is 
ridiculous."  Profundities  passed  to  and  fro, 
deep  calling  unto  deep. 

The  town   shook. 

Said  the  wise   ones :    "  Lining   out   is   the 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  45 

only    right    way.     IT'S  THE   WAY   WE   HAVE 

ALWAYS  DONE,  AND  THAT  SETTLES  IT."      But 

it  didn't  settle  it.  An  argument  as  old  as 
that  ought  to  have  settled  anything — but 
it  didn't. 

The  war  waged. 

The  feeling  ran  so  high  that  the  "  air " 
was  full  of  it,  and  so  deep,  that  it  spread 
to  the  other  parts,  much  of  it  descending 
so  far,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  as  to  be  of  a 
decidedly  bass  tenor ;  men  and  women  all 
quarrelling  as  if  the  whole  town  were  a  big 
choir.  Most  of  the  arguments  seem  to  have 
been  in  sharps,  though  many  of  them  would 
be  transposed  into  flats  nowadays.  The 
tempo  was  amazingly  rapid,  and  all  was  ren- 
dered fortissimo ;  until  one  is  reminded,  in 
looking  over  the  score,  or,  rather,  the  scor- 
ing, of  the  magnificent  Baal  Chorus  in  the 


46  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

"  Elijah,"  each  side  calling  upon  its  gods, 
with  its,  "  Oh,  Baal,  hear  us  !  "  and  cutting 
themselves,  after  their  manner,  with  knives 
and  lancets,  or,  rather,  one  another  (meta- 
phor), until  it  must  have  been  nearly  as  in- 
teresting to  Baal  and  his  relatives  as  it  is  to 
us ;  and  I  do  not  doubt  that  they  were  there. 
Oh,  the  arguments  rubbed  vigorously 
out  in  wash-tubs !  The  invectives  strung 
along  the  clothes-lines !  The  epithets  that 
were  churned  in  with  the  butter!  The  bit- 
terness that  was  skimmed  off  the  milkpans, 
and  the  sturdy  farmer's,  "  I  won't  give  up," 
planted  with  his  potatoes!  But  history  re- 
cords that,  when  the  potatoes  were  pulled 
up,  the  "  I  won't  "  was  pulled  up  too,  and 
the  lined-out  hymns  had  fallen  from  grace 
and  good  and  regular  standing  in  the  sanct- 
uary. 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  47 

It  was  in  this  wise.  The  first  victory 
was  in  getting  a  trial  of  the  new  way  for 
two  months.  Then  the  final  question  came 
up — the  older  ones  claiming  that  they  had 
all  the  past  of  the  world  on  their  side,  and 
the  lovers  of  the  new  way  insisting  that 
they  had  all  the  next  world  on  theirs,  for 
they  were  sure  that  the  angels  didn't  have 
any  lining  out  of  hymns  in  heaven.  Where- 
upon the  older  ones  talked  as  if  they  didn't 
care  to  go  there  unless  they  did,  and  would 
like  to  have  the  matter  decided  before  they 
started,  worrying  some  of  the  hotter  youth 
into  the  wish  that  they  would  go  and  see 
for  themselves  at  once ;  the  cooler  youth 
suggesting  that,  under  the  circumstances,  it 
would  be  wise  to  know  how  to  sing  in  both 
ways.  They  knew  how  in  the  old  way,  and 
had  better  spend  the  rest  of  their  lives  in 


48  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

practising  on  the  new,  and  then  they  would 
have  a  sure  thing  of  it.  The  older  ones  re- 
plied that,  if  they  actually  did  sing  in  the 
new  way  in  heaven,  the  younger  ones  might 
just  as  well  wait  until  they  reached  there, 
and  sing  in  the  old  way  while  they  had  a 
chance.  This  was  certainly  reasonable.  But 
it  was  of  no  avail.  Possibly,  from  a  guilty 
sense  that,  if  they  postponed  singing  the  new 
way,  to  heaven,  they  might  not  be  on  hand 
for  their  parts,  the  young  people  sinfully 
insisted,  and  on  a  fatal  night  in  1773  the 
agony  came  to  a  culmination  in  a  vote  of 
the  church  to  sing  in  the  new  way,  and  on 
the  following  Sunday  the  church  was  com- 
pelled to  listen  to  the  following  startling  in- 
novation : 

(Choir    sings    "  New    Durham,"     without 
lining  out.) 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  49 

Now,  any  one  can  see  that  such  a  shock- 
ingly modern  performance  as  this  would 
outrage  the  feelings  of  the  audience.  The 
result  was,  as  appears  from  the  vote  of  the 
next  church  meeting,  that  half  the  con- 
gregation were  so  filled  with  righteous  in- 
dignation that  they  could  not  find  breath 
to  sing  at  all.  Some  of  the  choir  thought 
that  this  rather  improved  the  singing,  and 
the  improvement  was  kept  up  with  vigor- 
ous silence  for  some  time.  On  the  I2th 
of  November,  1784,  John  Common  was 
brought  before  the  church  to  be  disciplined 
for  "  regularly  absenting  himself  from  public 
worship,"  and  he  made  the  statement  that : 

"  Whereas,  when  he  first  joined  with  this  church, 
the  method  of  singing  was  line  by  line  and  singing 
such  tunes  as  he  could  understand,  and  whereas 
the  church  have  voted  to  omit  reading  line  by  line 
and  singing  such  tunes  as  were  thus  intelligible  to 


5O  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

him,  therefore  he  cannot  with  good   conscience  join 
with  such  singing." 

This  musical  martyr  was  not  alone ;  but 
there  were  other  heroes  in  the  good  old 
cause,  capable  of  mounting  to  the  same 
height  of  discord,  and  self-sacrifice  in  stay- 
ing at  home  from  church  for  conscience's 
sake.  Whatever  may  be  said  about  great 
causes  bringing  out  great  men,  little  causes 
certainly  bring  out  the  greatness  of  little 
men. 

As  an  outcome  of  several  incidents  of 
this  kind,  on  November  4th  I  find  the  fol- 
lowing record : 

"  Whereas,  there  appears  in  the  mind  of  some  of 
the  brethren  of  this  church  an  uneasiness  on  ac- 
count of  the  late  method  of  singing,  especially  on 
account  of  its  being  confined  to  so  small  a  number. 
In  order,  therefore,  for  general  peace  and  union,  it  is 
agreed  that  one  half  of  the  time  the  old  tunes  shall 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  51 

be  lined  out  and  sung  with  reading  line  by  line, 
and  that  a  number  of  persons  shall  be  desired  to 
sit  below  in  order  to  assist  in  singing  both  tenor 
and  bass,  and  ye  other  part  of  ye  time  ye  new 
tunes  may  be  sung  without  reading  line  by  line." 

So  for  the  following  year  our  ancestors  for 
all  the  morning  services  sang  in  the  proper 
way,  which  was  this : 

LET  us  SING  THE  TWELVE  HUNDRED 
AND  FIFTH  HYMN!  1205. 

("  Coleshill "  is  lined  out  and  sung  by 
the  choir.) 

And  in  the  afternoon  the  hymns  were 
sung  without  being  cut  off  and  handed  to 
the  audience  in  cold  slices  ;  alternating  elo- 
cution and  execution  after  the  old  and 
correct  manner,  like  a  course  of  sacred 
sandwiches  in  music.  In  February,  1775, 
the  church  voted  that  all  hymns  should  be 


52  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

sung  without  lining,  and  no  linings  have 
ever  been  put  in  since — until  to-day.  We 
had  no  deacon  in  the  church  at  that  time, 

who,  like  Deacon  C ,  of  M , 

braved  the  whole  congregation  of  heretical 
non-liners,  and  lined  out  the  hymns  faith- 
fully all  by  himself,  like  a  lion  at  bay,  until 
the  choir  overpowered  him,  and  he  walked 
with  a  kind  of  lordly,  excommunicating  air 
out  of  the  church. 

No  statue  has  been  erected  to  his 
memory. 

As  for  Sharon,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
many  in  the  congregation  maintained  a 
grim  and  saintly  silence  during  the  pagan- 
ism of  unlined  hymns,  things  grew  worse 
and  worse  until  the  choir  actually  degen- 
erated into  anthems,  and  religion  occasion- 
ally dwindled  away  into  mere  duets  and 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  53 

trios,  with  frequent  excursions  into  the 
worldliness  of  musical  novelties :  and  do  you 
wonder  that  many  objections  were  raised, 
when  the  choir  actually  held  rehearsals  and 
favored  the  congregation  on  Sundays  with 
elaborate  operatic  airs  like  this  ? 

(CHOIR  SINGS  JUDGMENT  ANTHEM.) 

Hark !   hark  !   ye  mortals,  hear  the  trumpet 
(Bass)  Sounding  loud  the  mighty  ROAR. 

Hark  the  archangel's  voice  proclaiming, 
Thou,  old  time,  shalt  be  no  more. 

His  loud  trumpet,  his  loud  trumpet, 

(Bass)  Rend  the  tombs:   YE  DEAD,  AWAKE! 

See  the  purple  banner  flying, 

Hear  the  Judgment  chariot  roll.     R-O-L-L. 

(Judgment  chariot  rolls.  Rolls  some  more. 
— R-O-L-L-S — rolls  a  good  deal  more.  Rolls 
up  into  the  soprano  and  down  into  the  bass, 
off  on  to  the  tenor  and  along  on  the  alto — 


54  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

ROLLS !  Rolls  for  fifteen  minutes,  more  or 
less,  all  on  one  syllable,  and  then  slides  off 
on  to  another,  and  rolls  again.  ROLLS  !  How 
that  Judgment  chariot  rolls !  and  then,  finally, 
comes  to  a  jerking  short  stop  on  the  last 
note,  and  ends  with  a  wonderful  musical  thud, 
and  rolls  no  more.  Congregation,  which  had 
been  rising  and  facing  the  music,  or,  rather, 
the  chariot,  is  seated.) 

Now,  any  one  can  see  that  such  intricate 
convolutions  of  sound  must  have  had  a  very 
baleful  effect  upon  the  moral  life  of  the  com- 
munity. Such  stately  trills,  alternating  with 
such  worldly  wigglings  of  melody  and  artis- 
tic quavers,  to  say  nothing  of  the  profane 
and  thrilling  holding  of  the  breath  for  such 
a  long  period  of  time,  turning  the  worship 
of  the  Lord  into  a  mere  exhibition  of  breath- 
ing exercises,  caused  a  sensation  that  can  be 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  55 

better  imagined  than  described,  and  which, 
if  it  could  be  set  to  music,  would  be  one  of 
the  most  expressive  compositions  in  the  his- 
tory of  sound. 

There  is  always  an  old  way  and  always  a 
"new  way";  the  quarrels  of  yesterday  are 
but  our  own  quarrels  on  different  subjects. 
The  past  generations  are  but  historic  mas- 
querades on  ours,  and  in  them  we  see  our 
own  faults,  with  an  old  date  on  them,  and 
with  circumstances  just  enough  disguised  so 
that  we  do  not  recognize  the  fact  that  we  are 
laughing  at  ourselves.  There  is  a  curious 
sameness  in  human  nature — through  all  the 
old  ways  into  all  the  new  ones ;  but  all 
things  must  change,  and  the  relevancies  of 
one  day  are  the  irrelevancies  of  the  next,  and 
the  sublimity  of  one  age  the  fun  of  another 
world  without  end.  God  alone  can  untangle 


56  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

the  great  essentials  of  the  coming  of  His 
Kingdom  from  our  prejudices,  and  God  alone 
can  overcome  the  stiffening  of  our  joints 
into  custom  and  the  curious  confusion  of  our 
minds  between  what  is  right  and  what  we 
are  accustomed  to ;  and  the  world  moves  on, 
and  keeps  moving,  and  we  must  learn  to 
rejoice  in  its  progress,  even  though  it  bring 
to  us  the  sadness  of  moving  away  from  our- 
selves. It  is  not  moving  away  from  the  best 
in  us,  but  only  from  that  which  it  does  not 
need,  and  moving  to  that  which  it  needs 
more. 

I  have  been  struck,  in  looking  over  the 
church  records,  with  their  complete  failure  to 
really  reflect  the  life — the  real  nobility  and 
beauty — that  this  church  has  stood  for  in 
Sharon. 

The  curt  language  of  "  Yeas  and  nays  " — 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH. 


of  "  Voted  and  passed,"  as  seen  in  the  records, 
can  no  more  express  the  great  motherly 
heart  of  this  church,  brooding  over  these  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years,  going  out  to  the 
needs  and  hopes  of  this  village,  than  a  man's 
account  book  will  tell  you  the  real  life  of 
the  man,  with  the  yearnings  and  the  striv- 
ings and  the  triumphs  of  his  spirit  ;  or  than 
our  religion  can  be  spelt  out  in  figures,  or 
the  love  of  God  revealed  to  souls  in  geome- 
try. The  church  record  is  the  mere  steward 
of  the  church,  and  is  not  the  spirit  but  the 
body  of  history,  giving  you  only  glimpses  — 
through  the  loophole  of  an  inference  —  into 
the  great  soul-life  going  on  beyond. 

For  instance,  a  revival  will  be  sketched 
out  in  a  few  naked  figures  at  the  bottom  of 
a  page  ;  and  the  case  of  John  Blank,  who 
paid  four  shillings  to  a  brother  church  mem- 


58  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

ber  for  something  worth  two  shillings,  and 
didn't  want  to  heap  coals  of  fire  on  the  head 
of  the  dear  brother  who  had  cheated  him 
unless  he  could  do  it  literally,  would  occupy 
as  much  space  as  if  it  had  been  the  main 
event  of  the  year:  and  it  is  surprising  how, 
in  turning  over  the  leaves,  discipline  cases 
seem  so  numerous  that  one  feels  that  it 
must  be  a  record  of  sinners  instead  of  saints. 
I  remember  being  much  impressed,  how- 
ever, with  the  spirit  and  wisdom  of  Parson 
Smith  in  the  case  of  one  Mabel,  who  had 
been  guilty  of  absenting  herself  punctually 
and  regularly  from  Sabbath  services,  and 
who,  after  being  labored  with  by  numerous 
committees  and  sub-committees,  and  commit- 
tees on  more  committees,  was  finally  cut  off 
from  communion.  The  letter  doing  it  is 
one  so  rich  in  contrasts  of  love  and  consci- 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  59 

entious  severity  that  one  is  almost  glad  that 
Mabel  stayed  away  from  church  a  few  Sun- 
days in  order  to  thus  bring  out  the  rare 
spirit  that  moved  in  the  life  of  our  old  father- 
pastor,  Cotton  Mather  Smith.  Votes  of  ex- 
communication were  passed  very  impressively. 
It  was  a  vote  of  silence.  All  those  in  favor 
of  it  were  to  so  indicate  by  keeping  still  after 
the  question  was  put.  Not  a  voice  was  lifted, 
while  the  air  was  heavy  with  condemnation 
and  the  sad  sentence  of  unopened  lips,  as  if 
the  Lord  were  doing  it  and  not  they,  the 
guilty  one  being  cut  off  from  the  church 
with  not  a  word  spoken  against  him — only 
the  hush  that  left  the  soul  with  God  ! 

So  many  pages  in  the  record  are  taken 
up  with  the  notices  of  marriages  that  in 
places  it  looks  more  like  the  record  of  a  mat- 
rimonial society  than  of  an  ecclesiastical  one. 


60  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

It  was  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  this 
church  when  it  purchased  its  first  stove. 
It  was  in  the  early  years  of  Parson  Smith 
that  the  society  voted  that  a  committee 
look  into  the  matter  of  the  "  practicabil- 
ity of  having  a  stove."  It  is  recorded  with 
all  the  ponderousness  of  a  very  important 
and  revolutionary  event.  When  the  com- 
mittee reported  in  favor  of  warming  the 
building,  those  opposed  to  it  seemed  to  try 
to  make  it  unnecessary,  by  making  it  warm 
in  other  ways.  There  were  two  parties. 
Both  parties  were  warm ;  but  one  party  was 
warm  because  it  wanted  to  be  warm,  and 
the  other,  because  it  didn't  want  to  be 
warm.  There  had  never  been  any  heated  dis- 
cussions in  the  church  before — at  least,  only 
those  heated  by  foot-stoves — and  it  was  con- 
sidered orthodox  to  freeze.  "  We  had  always 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  6l 

frozen."  Religion  was  better  cold.  Our  fore- 
fathers had  always  pronounced  the  benedic- 
tion with  mittens  on,  and  if  a  stove  was  put 
in  the  mittens  would  have  to  be  taken  off, 
and  the  old  people  did  not  like  a  benedic- 
tion without  mittens,  and  it  would  be  an  in- 
novation. (Possibly  the  argument  was  some- 
thing like  this,  but  I  do  not  know.  No 
stenographers  were  present.)  People  who 
were  taxed  three  and  a  half  cents  on  a 
dollar  for  their  preaching  wanted  to  SEE 
their  sermons  as  well  as  hear  them ;  and 
when  you  could  actually  see  the  "  firstly," 
"secondly,"  and  "thirdly"  coming  out  of 
the  minister's  mouth,  in  beautiful,  frosty  out- 
lines, there  was  a  certain  tangibility  about  it 
that  made  it  plainer,  somehow,  and  made  up 
in  a  degree  for  the  abstract  quality  of  the 
points,  breathing  a  kind  of  spirit  into  them. 


62  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

Perhaps  this  was  it.  But  it  was  of  no 
avail.  The  stove  was  put  in,  and  things 
went  from  bad  to  worse  until  religion  seemed 
in  a  way  to  be  made  so  comfortable  that 
all  the  piety  would  be  taken  out  of  it,  and 
it  really  looked  as  if,  as  a  last  resort — if  a 
man  was  to  have  any  religion  at  all — he 
would  have  to  put  it  into  the  spirit  of  his 
life,  instead  of  being  sanctimoniously  miser- 
able a  few  hours  every  Sunday  and  feeling 
as  if  he  had  done  something  for  the  Lord. 
Mr.  Smith  asked  for  an  assistant  in  the 
forty-ninth  year  of  his  pastorate,  and  the 
church  called  Mr.  Perry ;  and  when,  at  last, 
the  great  heart  had  passed  away,  the  heart 
that  had  stirred  so  many  lives  with  its 
strength  and  courage,  and  soothed  so  many 
griefs  with  its  peace,  the  heart  that  had 
built  fifty  years  of  itself  into  the  very 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  63 

foundations  of  this  town,  it  took  all  Sharon 
and  two  generations  to  measure  all  that 
God  had  done  for  us  in  him :  and  God  is 
not  through  yet,  for  the  spirit  of  Cotton 
Mather  Smith  lives  over  and  over  again  in 
that  beautiful  posterity  of  human  souls,  and 
that  wonderful  genealogy  of  unseen  de- 
scendants, in  the  thoughts  and  lives  of  men, 
that  God  is  ever  weaving  out  of  the  influ- 
ences of  a  soul  for  centuries  after  He  has 
taken  the  soul  to  Himself. 

The  fifty  years  of  his  pastorate  here  were 
only  the  arc  of  a  circle  that  God  is  ever 
finishing,  and  though  Mr.  Perry  was  called 
to  be  his  assistant,  all  of  us  who  have  fol- 
lowed have  been  but  the  assistants  of  Cot- 
ton Mather  Smith  ;  for  he  is  working  here 
yet.  Men  never  die.  Every  touch  of  influ- 
ence from  a  human  life  has  its  ripple  upon 


64  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

the  farthest  shore  of  history.  A  good  deed 
is  never  childless,  but  is  the  Adam  of  an  im- 
mortal race  that  goes  on  multiplying  through 
all  the  generations  of  men  ;  and,  though  God 
may  take  a  man  from  us,  the  thoughts 
that  were  the  children  of  his  soul  go  mov- 
ing to  and  fro  across  the  restless  spirit  of 
the  world  forever  and  forever ! 

Mr.  Perry  was  our  pastor  for  thirty-one 
years.  His  work  began  with  a  revival.  The 
Sunday  School  was  started  by  him  in  1818, 
Deacon  William  Smith  being  the  first  super- 
intendent, holding  the  office,  after  what  seems 
to  have  been  the  Smith  custom,  for  nearly 
fifty  years.  "  Smith  "  seems  a  semi-centennial 
name.  We  regret  that  the  Superintendent 
Smith  who  has  just  resigned  has  not  lived 
up  to  it.  This  present  building  was  built 
out  of  the  conversion  of  souls,  a  large  in- 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  65 

crease  making  a  new  house  possible.  The 
church  has  had  eleven  pastors,  and  a  total 
membership  of  1,217  souls.  Of  the  original 
members,  the  only  two  represented  among 
us  by  their  own  name,  in  the  male  line, 
are  Deacon  Ebenezer  Jackson  and  Deacon 
Ebenezer  Hamlin,  by  which  it  would  appear 
that  Providence  has  a  special  leaning  to- 
ward Ebenezer  as  a  first  name,  for  this 
climate,  and  toward  deacons  as  a  good, 
firm  soil  to  plant  the  family  tree  in. 

Indeed,  it  would  seem  as  if  Sharon  must 
have  been  raised  as  a  kind  of  Litchfield 
Ebenezer,  for  there  is  another  name  handed 
down  to  posterity  in  the  fair  bosom  of  our 
beautiful  lake  a  mile  north  of  the  village : 
Ebenezer  Mudge — the  ancestor  of  Mudge 
Pond.  They  ought  to  have  lived  on  some 
other  pond — "  the  Mudges."  The  whole  fam- 


66  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

ily  abandoned  us  before  the  Revolutionary 
War,  and  yet  that  exquisite  touch  of  a  name, 
"  Mudge,"  is  what  we  faithfully  call  our  in- 
nocent lake  by.  The  veriest  wild  Indian 
war-whoop  of  a  name  would  be  better, 
although  you  couldn't  have  hired  a  well-bred 
savage  to  call  a  swamp  by  such  a  bad,  bad 
name  as  that.  There  is  something  very 
touching  to  me  in  this  sad  instance  of  what 
might  be  called  unpoetic  license,  that  such  a 
lovely  sheet  of  water  should  be  handed  down 
to  posterity  with  such  a  sentimental  blunder 
of  a  name — to  be  Mudgified  by  generation 
after  generation,  because  Mrs.  Ebenezer 
Mudge  happened  to  make  rye-bread  in  a 
cabin  on  its  banks  for  a  few  seasons  before 
they  moved  away;  and  if  we  have  to  call  a 
public  mass  meeting  this  afternoon  to  do  it, 
it  seems  to  me  that  this  favorite  lake  of 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  6/ 

ours  should  be  un-Mudged  (great  crises  call 
for  great  men),  even  if  we  can't  find  any- 
thing better  than  the  Indian  name  of  a 
stream  I  know  of  in  the  West  — "  Squeety- 
wagoogoo,"  I  think — which  was  the  Indian 
name  for  rum,  and  I  suggest  that  a  good 
way  to  christen  it  would  be  to  pour  all  the 
"  squeetywagoogoo  "  we  can  find  into  it,  be- 
ginning at  the  parsonage  place.  I'll  let  our 
Congregational  license  go.  Demoralizing  to 
the  fish?  There  is  Scripture  for  it.  I  refer 
you  to  Matthew  viii.  31,  32,  and  the  devils 
of  another  day.  Henceforth  "  Mudge "  is 
dead  to  me.  I  call  it  Webotuck. 

Here  are  a.  few  stray  motions  on  the 
records.  (I  don't  mean  lost  motions.)  For 
instance,  as  regards  collection  of  salary : 

VOTED,   "That  the  collector  of  said  tax  shall  be 
entitled  to  receive  two  and  a  half  per  cent,  upon  all 


ABOUT    AN    OLD 


monies  which  he  shall  collect  on  said  tax  and  pay 
into  the  treasury,  provided  he  shall  pay  over  the  whole 
of  said  tax,  deducting  the  abatements,  and  settle  the 
same  with  the  treasurer  on  or  before  the  first  day  of 
January  next." 

There  is  no  doubt  in  the  minds  of  all 
fair-minded  nistorians  that  we  have  had  sin- 
ners in  Sharon,  but  it  gives  one  a  kind  of 
New  Testament  feeling  to  thus  realize  that 
we  have  had  both  publicans  and  sinners. 

VOTED,  "That  a  committee  be  appointed  to  seat 
the  meeting-house — by  dignity,  age,  and  list." 

Another  vote  on  record  was  that  all  be 
seated  according  to  "  dignity,  age,  and  quality" 
Note  the  striking  and  beautiful  analogy  be- 
tween the  Sharonites  and  the  Apostles. 

VOTED,  "  That  no  wooden  foot-stoves  be  used  nor 
admitted  into  the  meeting-house,  and  that  no  foot- 
stoves  be  filled  in  the  house  during  the  time  of  re- 
ligious worship." 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  69 

Good  thing  for  punctuality,  foot-stoves! 
Might  give  a  few  away  in  our  congregation. 

VOTED,  "That  no  person  shall  use  tobacco  in  the 
house  without  providing  spitting  boxes." 

There  was  a  great  deal  of  pious  spit- 
ting in  those  days — but,  you  see,  it  was 
always  done  decently  and  in  order. 

VOTED,  "  That  the  committee  be  authorized  to 
place  tin  pans  under  the  stove-pipe  to  prevent  its 
dripping." 

VOTED,  "  That  a  committee  be  appointed  to  try 
and  sell  the  bass  viol  belonging  to  the  Society." 

(Bass-viol  suddenly  growls  in  the  gallery 
as  its  name  is  mentioned.)  Its  ghost  seems 
to  have  risen  to  the  occasion — that  its 
name  may  not  be  taken  in  vain.  Well,  dear 
old  bass-viol !  though  at  first  you  seemed — 
to  our  unriddled  sanctity — a  little  fiddleish, 


70  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

you  served  us  well  and  nobly,  and  we  can 
truly  say  that  we  are  glad  we  scraped  an 
acquaintance  with  you — in  the  days  of  auld 
lang  syne — and  you  certainly  may  speak  in 
our  meeting.  You  know  our  sign  is,  "  Please 
be  brief,  but  not  silent."  And  you  too,  oh, 
sacred  flute !  (flute  sounds)  wont  in  the 
days  gone  by  to  take  up  our  religious  feel- 
ings and  waft  them  out  in  breathy  tootings 
over  our  listening  ears — in  notes  so  full,  so 
divinely  shrill,  that  they  vibrated  in  the 
very  marrow  of  our  bones.  Hail  !  old 
tooter!  beloved  discord  of  many  memories! 
girls  in  the  galleries !  whispers  in  the  choir ! 
notes  in  the  hymn  books !  We  greet  thee 
across  the  years  ! 

The  church  has  had  four  parsonages. 
The  land  was  once  given  for  "  a  parsonage 
to  be  erected  thereon  to  be  the  residence  " 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH. 


(so  says  the  agreement)  "of  ministers  whose 
theological  sentiments  accord  with  the  Con- 
fession of  Faith  at  present  established  in  this 
church."  It  was  the  evident  intention  to 
have  an  orthodox  parsonage,  at  all  events  —  if 
they  should  happen  to  fail  on  the  ortho- 
doxy of  their  ministers.  Query,  Why  has 
the  parsonage  had  to  be  moved  so  often  ? 

VOTED,  "  That  this  Society  pay  the  Rev.  -  for 
his  services,  Nov.  ist,  and  thereafter  as  money  may 
be  in  the  treasury  from  time  to  time,  not  needed  for 
other  purposes." 

Passed.  This  looks  a  little  as  if  the  par- 
sonage babies  had  to  take  their  chances  on 
getting  new  copper-toed  shoes  when  the 
other  children  did,  but  it  is  explained  away 
by  saying  that  the  salary  had  always  been 
paid  annually  ;  and  this  was  a  concession  — 
allowing  the  good  dominie  to  put  his  hand 


72  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

in  the  church  pocket  whenever  he  chose — if 
he  could  find  anything  there,  lying  around 
in  a  kind  of  loose  "  you-may-take-me-if-you- 
please "  fashion.  The  church  has  always 
treated  its  pastors  very  handsomely — al- 
though, in  taking  a  good  long,  historical  per- 
spective of  a  look  at  ourselves,  we  discover 
some  things  that  we  would  not  do  over  again. 
But  I  fear  the  perspective  is  getting  a 
little  too  long,  and  I  must  begin  to  begin 
to  stop ;  but  it  takes  so  long  to  climb  up 
into  this  pulpit  that  a  man  feels  he  must 
do  something  after  he  is  here.  I  was  told 
at  breakfast  this  morning  that  my  audience 
would  think  I  was  in  heaven  when  I  com- 
menced to  speak  from  this  holy  height ;  and 
I  felt  sure  that  you  would  wish  I  was  be- 
fore I  was  through,  for  I  fear  that  most  of 
you  are  going  home  a  decidedly  stiff-necked 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  73 

people — especially  those  in  the  front  seats. 
But  the  celebrating  of  this  one  hundred  and 
fiftieth  anniversary  is  so  important  an  event, 
that  so  young  a  man  as  myself  could  hardly 
help  feeling  that  this  high  old  pulpit 
would  have  to  be  brought  in  to  help  him 
rise  to  the  occasion ;  but  I  am  sure  that  I 
have  not  set  it  on  fire  with  my  eloquence, 
in  spite  of  the  kerosene  that  it  has  been  so 
freely  cleansed  and  polished  with.  And  as 
for  your  stiff  necks — you  will  have  the 
liniment  of  knowing  that  they  are  not  half 
so  stiff  as — the  same  in  your  forefathers ; 
for  there  were  several  more  stories  on  this 
pulpit,  in  th'e  palmy  days  of  yore,  and 
the  sexton  used  to  step  from  the  pulpit 
into  the  gallery  to  do  his  dusting — or,  rather, 
perhaps  he  did,  or  he  could  have  done  it ; 
or,  possibly,  my  dear  brethren,  he  didn't  at 


74  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

all.  I  can't  say  that  any  one  really  ever  saw 
it ;  but  one  thing  I  know,  as  I  leave  the 
solemn  stateliness  of  this  old  desk,  never 
have  there  been  such  flutterings  and  flop- 
pings  of  vain,  empty  thoughts  as  have 
winged  their  way  out  over  it  to  you  from 
the  dim  and  misty  regions  of  the  past  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years! 

I  hope  that  I  have  offended  none  of 
the  Chinamen  in  my  audience  this  morn- 
ing. I  refer  to  the  Chinese  genius  of  a  few 
men  here  and  there  in  the  world,  who  turn 
a  healthy  honor  of  the  past  into  the 
morbid  paganism  of  a  thoroughly  almond- 
eyed  ancestor-worship ;  so  that,  in  consider- 
ing the  past,  we  are  standing,  to  their  minds, 
in  a  cemetery  on  the  edge  of  graves,  and 
all  the  foibles  of  human  nature  that  have 
been  buried  have  never  been.  They  are 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  75 

wiped  out  by  an  epitaph,  and  men  are  gods 
when  their  tombstones  are  cut.  I  hope  I 
am  not  irreverent,  but  I  do  not  think  so. 
All  that  the  Past  is  for  is  the  Present.  I 
live  in  the  hope  that  our  follies  and  ab- 
surdities will  teach  the  future,  as  well  as 
our  virtues.  That  is  one  way  of  atoning 
for  them — the  only  way  some  of  us  have. 
And  the  man  who  loves  his  race  as  a  kind 
of  splendid  larger  self,  a  vast  and  glorious 
magnifying  of  the  instincts  of  his  own  heart 
stretching  over  the  ages,  growing  better 
with  every  one  hundred  and  fifty  years,  is 
so  sure  of  his  love  of  those  who  have  gone 
before  that  he  feels  he  can  afford  to  laugh 
a  little  at  the  smaller  eccentricities  of  their 
ways,  as  only  a  far-off  shadow  of  the 
eccentricities  of  his  own.  We  smile  but  at 
portraits  of  ourselves  fancifully  taken  in  old- 


76  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

fashioned  clothes.  It  is  this  same  ridicu- 
lous, old  human  nature  of  ours,  with  its 
stately-comic  travesty  on  itself — kind  of 
sadly  laughable ;  grand  even  in  its  foolish- 
ness, and  foolish  ever  in  its  grandeur  ! 
What  a  beautiful  blunder  we  are !  What 
a  great  glory  of  a  mistake ! 

Man  has  ever  been,  and  ever  will  be, 
his  own  fun  and  his  own  solemnity,  his 
own  disgrace  and  his  own  dignity ;  while 
all  the  years  pass  over  him,  with  their  exits 
and  their  entrances,  he  is  ever  the  great 
tragi-comedy  of  existence,  taking  off  his 
own  follies,  interpreting  his  own  greatness, 
laughing  and  crying,  striving  and  failing, 
strutting  now  in  sublime  littleness  and  bow- 
ing again  in  little  sublimity — weaver  of  non- 
sense and  heroism  out  of  the  weak-strong 
strangeness  of  his  heart ! 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  77 

But  while  there  is  a  good  deal  to  smile 
over  in  this  one  hundred  and  fifty  years, 
there  is  more  to  pray  over,  and  many  are 
the  sermons  folded  away  in  events  for  our 
thoughtfulness. 

The  "  Home "  of  our  forefathers,  for  in- 
stance, was  not,  as  is  often  the  case  with  us, 
a  place  to  be  born  in  and  to  sleep  in,  and  to 
come  down  late  to  breakfast  in,  just  in  time 
to  rush  off  into  the  great  hive-home  of  busi- 
ness. It  was  not  a  kind  of  natural  restau- 
rant in  which  to  take  meals,  a  place  to  be 
sick  in,  a  place  to  be  loved  in  when  we 
are  too  tired  for  anything  else ;  nor  a  place 
to  cry  in  and  be  cross  in  and  sweet  in  and 
petted  in  and  scolded  in  until  just  old 
enough  to  get  away,  to  make  a  home  out 
of  everywhere  and  a  family  out  of  every 
one.  Well  might  this  unconsciously  home- 


78  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

less  boarding-house  race  of  ours  look  back 
to  the  good  old  days  when  a  family  was 
started  with  somewhat  of  the  feeling  with 
which  a  colony  was ;  and  though  the  father 
was  a  little  too  much  like  a  governor,  he 
at  least  did  his  own  the  honor  of  seeing 
that  God  had  given  him  a  holier  trust  than 
ever  a  state  can  give  a  man.  And  well 
may  we  learn  from  them,  that  the  largest 
responsibility  there  is  in  life  is  ever  the  soul 
of  the  child  that  we  bring  into  the  world, 
and  that  the  heart  of  a  boy  or  girl  is  a 
great  unknown  continent  of  a  possibility, 
and  that  there  is  no  office  that  man  gives 
to  his  fellows  so  sacred  with  responsibility 
and  so  momentous  with  consequences  as 
that  office  which  God  gives  to  thousands  of 
men  and  women — the  kingliness  of  being 
father  to  a  soul  and  the  queenliness  of 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  79 

being  mother  to  a  human  heart,  and  the 
kingdom  of  a  home !  And  again,  while  our 
ancestors,  making  an  intense  business  of 
religion,  were  a  little  apt  to  feel  that  they 
could  let  it  go  a  little  after  business  hours, 
and  that  God  was  on  one  side  and  a  good 
time  on  the  other,  we  are  reminded  that 
real  religion  is  the  genius  of  intense  earnest- 
ness and  looks  down  into  the  great  deeps 
and  sees  the  chasms  there,  and  then  looks 
up  into  the  great  deeps  and  sees  the  love 
there ;  and  it  is  not,  like  some  of  ours,  a 
pious  thoughtlessness  and  a  kind  of  con- 
scientious carelessness,  but  a  deep  thing 
— a  glorious  sad-glad  knowledge,  and  not  a 
butterfly  peace  fluttering  over  small  things, 
happy  in  not  seeing  great  ones.  A  wor- 
shipful and  beautiful  seriousness,  a  vast, 
incalculable,  wonderful,  unworded  solemnity, 


8O  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

this  religion  of  ours !  They  teach  us  this, 
and,  while  the  Puritan  made  God  a  kind 
of  infinite  and  eternal  Puritan  Himself,  and 
often,  under  the  extravagances  of  the  doc- 
trine of  election,  a  great,  fickle  Arbitrari- 
ness, selecting  and  rejecting  souls  with  a 
kind  of  autocratic,  infinite  unreasonableness, 
without  reference  to  their  pleadings  some- 
times, it  is  certainly  better  than  the  modern 
infant-class  God — a  great  Sentimentality  far 
away  in  the  heavens — who,  in  a  kind  of 
vast  weak-mindedness,  wants  everybody  to 
be  good  and  hopes  they  will,  but  doesn't 
quite  know  what  to  do  about  it  if  they  are 
not.  And  which  is  worse — the  old  way  of 
almost  thinking  that  God  would  take  ad- 
vantage of  men,  or  the  new  way  of  treat- 
ing Him  as  a  kind  of  Infinite  Convenience, 
and  supposing  that  men  can  take  advan- 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  8 1 

tage  of  Him?  The  one  was  stupidity  of 
mind,  but  this  is  meanness  of  spirit. 

We  can  learn  from  one  of  the  mistakes 
of  our  ancestors  that  the  only  religion  that 
can  live  is  one  that  is  as  broad  as  human 
life,  and  that  no  religion  can  make  itself  a 
special  faculty  of  the  soul ;  but,  would  it  live, 
it  must  be  of  all  the  faculties  combined — 
making  a  specialty  of  observing  one  God. 

It  was  the  blunder  of  their  methods  that 
they  tried  to  get  a  man  away  from  his  life 
over  into  religion — instead  of  trying  to  get 
his  religion  over  into  his  life.  The  religion 
needs  the  life,  and  the  life  needs  the  relig- 
ion. 

They  teach  us,  also,  the  force  and  value 
of  definite  convictions,  and  their  superb  so- 
lidity makes  its  own  comments — standing 

rock-like    under    our    theology    of     beautiful 
6 


82  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

mist,  and  vast,  glorious,  shining  vagueness  ; 
and,  while  we  would  not  go  back  to  them, 
they  enforce  the  lesson  that  they  needed  us 
and  we  need  them,  and  that  the  only  safe  lib- 
eral man  is  the  very  intense  and  earnest  one, 
and  the  only  safe  earnest  man  is  the  truly 
liberal  one. 

Looking  over  these  years,  we  but  learn 
again  that  it  takes  all  the  epochs  to  spell 
out  God,  and  that  religion  is  a  kind  of  rain- 
bow arching  across  the  ages,  each  century 
putting  in  its  own  particular  color ;  but  it 
takes  the  adding  of  them  all  together  to  bring 
out  the  glory  of  beautiful  blendings,  reaching 
from  horizon  to  horizon,  that  exist  in  the  nat- 
ure of  God.  And  it  comes  to  me  in  another 
way — that  years  are  a  sort  of  books,  each 
coming  with  its  copy  to  each  of  us,  never 
to  be  copied  again.  We  have  the  "  Century 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  83 

Dictionary,"  but  we  have  also  another  dic- 
tionary— great,  massive  folios  issued  from 
heaven,  the  dictionary  of  the  centuries — 
which  God  is  writing,  of  infinite  meanings, 
out  of  human  event  and  experience,  and  we 
have  been  turning  over  the  last  one  hundred 
and  fifty  pages  and  looking  up  some  of  the 
references — and  the  new  words  God  has  been 
writing  there  for  the  souls  of  men. 

God  is  always  writing.  He  is  the  Great 
Author.  The  Bible  is  only  one  of  His  Prim- 
ers, and  all  history  is  a  massive  publication  of 
God's  love,  God's  interest  in  us — publishing 
the  Bible  over  again  in  a  new  and  more 
gigantic  form,  in  the  sublime,  God-like  real- 
ism of  what  actually  takes  place  in  the 
world  ;  the  Bible,  translated  into  events,  and 
into  a  thousand  thousand  tongues  of  human 
experience.  The  Bible,  so  far  as  the  canon 


84  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

is  concerned,  closes  with  the  Revelation  of 
John  ;  but  history  is  the  Revelation  of  God  ; 
and  the  ages,  as  they  roll  on,  are  an  ever 
mightier  inspiration.  God  in  History  is  tak- 
ing the  whole  human  race  for  a  deep, 
broad  wonder  of  an  apostle,  and  inspiring 
it  to  speak  from  its  own  great  heart  to  its 
own  great  Self  and  the  brooding  greater 
greatness  of  the  future. 

This  is  the  last  day  in  our  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years.  To-morrow  is  the  birthday 
of  a  new  history — and  of  the  new  series 
God  begins,  for  us,  of  the  blessings  yet  to 
be.  God  is  with  us.  The  Past  is  with  us. 
One  hundred  and  fifty  years  are  assembled 
in  this  sacredness — and  the  1,200  souls  that 
have  waited  in  this  church,  on  their  way  to 
heaven,  watch  over  us  with  the  deep  and 
tender  benediction  of  all  their  prayers,  their 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  85 

strivings,  and  their  triumphs.  The  real  his- 
tory of  this  church  has  been  written  by  God 
in  a  nobler,  deeper  language  than  my  words 
can  feel  their  way  to.  Human  lives  !  God's 
words !  I  would  that,  in  solemn  and  still 
processional  winding  through  this  pulpit,  one 
by  one,  I  could  cause  the  spirits  of  these 
lives  to  pass  before  you  ;  for  the  real  history 
begins  where  my  words  leave  off.  It  would 
be  like  gathering  the  sunshine  of  the  sunny 
days  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  years.  The 
earth  feels  it,  but  the  sunny  days  are  gone ; 
God  has  gathered  them  unto  Himself.  We 
can  only  have  more  like  them.  One  hundred 
and  fifty  yeais  of  blunders  and  blessings — 
blessed  blunders,  blunderings  blessed !  Oh, 
this  wondrous  maze  of  good  and  evil  that  we 
call  the  human  heart !  this  strange  intricacy 
of  things  from  another  world,  of  forces  and 


86  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

weaknesses,  trying  to  puzzle  its  dim-lighted 
way  across  Time  into  Eternity,  under  the 
love  of  God,  to  the  destination  of  things  ! 
Out  of  our  honor,  out  of  our  disgrace,  out 
of  our  prayers,  out  of  our  hopes  and  de- 
spairs, out  of  our  prejudices  and  charities, 
God  is  working  wonders  in  a  kind  of  di- 
vinely wilful  way — of  having  everything  come 
out  rightly  in  spite  of  us  ! 

One  hundred  and  fifty  years  seems  long 
to  us,  but  to  God  it  is  only  one  of  the 
touches  of  His  sublime  love  upon  the  hu- 
man spirit,  out  of  countless  ones  across  the 
ages.  We  look  back  out  of  our  newness 
this  morning  upon  this,  oldness  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  but  our 
newness  is  but  another  oldness  yet  to 
be.  It  is  we  who  are  new  and  old ;  but 
all  that  belongs  to  God  moves  majesti- 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  87 

cally  on  above  these  very  human  words. 
This  church  belongs  to  God ;  and  long  after 
the  elms  on  our  village  streets  have  dropped 
away,  and  many  new  corner-stones  have 
been  laid,  this  church  will  live  on,  standing 
at  the  door-way  of  life,  and  leading  the  gen- 
erations each  as  they  come  unto  Him.  A 
church  is  the  best  symbol  of  Eternity  we 
have  in  Time.  Generations,  to  a  church, 
are  but  what  years  are  to  the  spirit  of  a 
man,  while  thousands  of  members  who  are 
born  into  it,  and  live  out  the  meaning  of 
their  threescore  and  ten,  die  away  and  are 
no  more ;  but  the  church  lives  on,  lives  on 
like  some  great  spirit  that  can  never  die, 
while  the  souls  of  men  are  but  thoughts 
and  feelings  that  come  and  go  across  it. 

We   stand    under    the    halo    of    the    past. 
Stepping  into  the   pastorate  of   this   church, 


88  ABOUT    AN    OLD 

a  great  wave  of  awe  comes  over  me  to-day ; 
and  I  am  young — wonderfully  young!  Holy 
with  traditions  and  rich  with  memories,  I 
stand  like  a  little  child  under  this  mighty 
Past,  like  a  child  entering  a  great  cathedral 
— time-hallowed  arches  reaching  over  him — 
afraid  of  his  own  small  voice,  echoing 
childishly  across  the  wide,  still  reaches  of  all 
that  has  gone  before ;  and  the  great,  deep 
heart  of  this  church,  speaking  across  all  the 
silences  of  these  beautiful  years,  makes  my 
heart  stand  still.  Who  am  I — who  are 
you — to  take  up  the  glory  of  this  Past  and 
hand  it  on  through  the  sweetness  of  our 
lives  to  the  waiting  Future  ? 

Will    it   be    a    broken     link — a  sad  paren- 
thesis— of  God's  looking  the  other  way  ? 

God  has  given  us  the  Past.     The  Future 
belongs   to   God.       And   it   belongs   to   us — 


NEW    ENGLAND    CHURCH.  89 

to  us  in  Him,  and  to  Him  in  us.  And,  lo ! 
the  years,  like  prophets,  come  to  meet  us, 
preaching  a  greater  nobility  to  be,  out  of 
the  nobility  that  hath  been  ;  and,  lo !  the 
lives  that  have  gone  before,  linking  with 
souls  this  church  to  heaven,  seem  but  a  kind 
of  living,  loving  logic,  linking  heaven  to  us : 
promises  gone  before  of  what  we  may  be. 
They  have  given  the  direction  and  the  im- 
pulse. We  have  only  to  be  true. 

The  best  celebration  of  the  last  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years  will  be  the  next  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years. 

Look  now  teward  heaven,  and  tell  the  stars, 
if  thou  be  able  to  tell  them  :  and  He  said  unto 
him,  So  shall  thy  seed  be. 


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